


Ruby Red

by sawbones



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Angst, Body Horror, Corruption, Established Relationship, F/F, Memory Loss, Red Templars, Transformation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-09
Updated: 2017-01-09
Packaged: 2018-09-16 00:53:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9266507
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sawbones/pseuds/sawbones
Summary: Behemoth, they called her. Towering, terrifying. Where was Jess, under all that red? A twist of metal helm to mark where her head had been, two flat eyes that glinted in the low light. She was still there, Ruby knew it. She responded to her name, or at least to Ruby’s voice. Not any voice, just hers. Only hers.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I needed a palette cleanser to help with some writer's block so I've been replaying Inquisition lately, and found myself sympathising too much with Samson and his Red Templars.

 

Ruby turned the vial over in her fingers and watched the way the oily red liquid within shifted restlessly, unnaturally. Back in the Circle, back when they still held fast with the Chantry, they were served their lyrium in ornate little cups all decorated about with Andraste’s face and fire; out there, out in wild all adrift, they took it any way they could. Potion, tincture, dust, in a cup or a vial or a bottle.

It had never been red before.

There was an officer who handed out the vials to the men - a Captain maybe, but it was hard to tell when they didn’t always have the right armor any more. He was another new face, one Ruby had seen arrive in the last scrappy group a night past and he didn’t look well, all bruised about the eyes, but then again half of them looked just the same. Supplies were hard fought for and won in the war, and their lyrium stocks had been stretched thin. The dwarves had put trading on hold until they could see which side of the fence the favour would land on, and a rogue army didn’t have much in the way of coin to fork out for extortionate smugglers.

There was a pause in his speech and a shout went up, quiet for the amount of bodies there, but it was enough to make Ruby lift her chin for a moment. She tried to keep up on what he was saying about the new lyrium, something about strength and duty, glory and a General, but Maker it was so _loud_ in her hand, like a waterfall in a bottle. She could scarcely focus on anything else.

She cut a glance at Jess, and found her already looking. Her vial lay in her open palm and her expression was unreadable. Jess was one of the newest recruits they had left, not the youngest, but she’d only just finished her Vigil when the war broke out. They had known each other in Jainen, and she was a good lass, smart and capable. They’d gotten close fast, maybe too fast but it was desperate times and you held on to any softness you could find. She knew the lyrium’s sweetness, but she didn’t know its bite. She wouldn’t be looking at Ruby if she did.

Ruby took the new lyrium without any ceremony. It was thick and bitter, and she forced it down without gagging for the sake of Jess watching. From the moment it touched her tongue, she knew it was different in more than just colour. Regular lyrium was bright and lively, it was clean and cleansing, cold water in a parched land, but this was like drinking hot oil. It was thick and slick, and scalding. It felt like it coated every inch of her inside and stuck to her ribs, seeping into her bones. She shivered and swallowed around her tongue, suddenly too big for her mouth.

Emboldened, Jess did the same.

\--

“It doesn’t feel right, does it. It doesn’t--” Jess began, then cut herself off. She was buzzing. It was dark in the tent they shared, but Ruby could see her press her tongue against her teeth the way she always did when she was thinking, “It doesn’t _sound_ right.”

“You’re just not used to it yet,” Ruby said, staring at the grubby canvas above her head, “It’s always a bit different if you’ve went without for a while. Never quite how you remember it.”

“That’s not it. The song’s different,” Jess said. She always called the surge of strength that came with lyrium her _blue song_. Ruby had scoffed at her romanticisms, but she knew what she meant. She was right. It was harder and hotter, and her guts clenched themselves in knots for hours after that first dose, but lyrium was lyrium and there wasn’t much choice otherwise.

“It’s the Maker’s song, one way or another, and it sounds just as sweet to me,”  Ruby said.

Jess reached for her; their hands met in the space between their cots, and she felt hot to the touch. Ruby squeezed lightly.

“Try and get some sleep, love.”

\--

There was no sleep to be had, not in their tent nor in the rest of the encampment. Ruby could hear them, the others. Whispers by the fire, wandering the perimeters. The night crackled with an anxious energy, a purpose, the first they’d had in months. They had been adrift for so long, too long. Her heart was racing like she was terrified but she was more calm than she had been since the Circle broke. Jess did not let go.

\--

“You are so much more than the Chantry led you to believe. You are so much more than dogs on a leash, or jailers,” the Captain said as he passed out the vials again, “You are champions of the just. You are the Maker’s righteous warriors.”

His saliva had a pinkish tint to it when he bared his teeth. His brown eyes looked red in the torchlight. Ruby felt like she shouldn’t notice this from twenty feet away, but she could see everything. Feel everything. His voice reverberated through her chest as she swallowed down the lyrium, and matched the blood-rush in her ears.

“The Chantry abandoned you. General Samson will not.”

\--

A fight broke out during sparring. One man killed another - not with his sword, no. He crushed his head with his bare hands, helmet and all. He seemed giddy afterwards, like he didn’t know what he had done, all covered in blood and laughing while the rest watched on. They had been friends, the two men, both from Jader and bonded over it. Ruby was glad Jess was on patrol and not there to see it.

Nobody said anything. Nobody talked about it after. The violence spoke to them. They felt the changes in themselves. _She_ felt the changes.

No human had ever laughed like that.

\--

“By the grace of Andraste, by the strength of the Maker, you will never know fear again. You are the vanguard of a most holy army. You will restore order to this world. Your sacrifice and your strength will lift us all into the light.”

Ruby thought she had known that strength before, but she realised then she had only stood on the precipice of it. The limitless stretched before them all, and all they had to do was endure. Endure the fever. Endure the pain. It was cleansing fire, it was burning purpose. The Captain passed on the General’s plans and sentiments as he handed out the vials, and every evening became a sermon. She hadn’t met him yet but she believed in him; he was more real than the Maker had ever been to her.

They had prayed for supplies; the Red General sent them. They had prayed for lyrium; the Red General delivered it. They had prayed for guidance; the Red General led them.

To where, Ruby did not care to ask.

\--

“It hurts, Ruby. It hurts, please, I don’t want to--” Jess clutched at the seams of Ruby’s breastplate as she curled in on herself, her mouth a twist of agony, “I don’t want it any more.”

“Hold fast, love. It’s just the birthing pains of your new power,” Ruby said, voice soft as she held onto Jess. She push an errant lock of hair from her damp brow, “Powers untold. Such gifts don’t come without a price. Endure a little longer.”

“I don’t want it any more. It’s in me, I can feel it in me, I can _feel_ it growing; Ruby, I don’t want it any more,” Jess pleaded. Her voice was cracked, scratchy. Her face, though slick with a sheen of sweat and feverish to the touch, was as pale as the grave.

Some, like Ruby, passed through it with relative ease. It felt like growing pains all over again, a bone-deep ache that knifed at every part of her. She had been seized by a fever for days, and had been delirious and confused, but when it broke, she felt like she could devour planets.

Others were less lucky. Their changes were harder, more painful; some didn’t make it at all, and those who did - well, not all of them were glad to.

Jess would be fine. Jess would be okay. This would pass, as it had passed for her, and they would march ever onwards together.

“Take the elfroot, Jess. It will help,” Ruby said as she picked up the bottle and brought it to Jess’ lips. Jess tossed her head from side to side, her litany of _no no no_ melding into a moan of panic, but it was easy enough to hold her still.

\--

“I can taste it,” Jess gasped against her neck, teeth on skin, nails tearing up her back, “I can taste the red in you.”

Ruby bit as much as she kissed, no words of her own, no thoughts but Jess. Pretty Jess, funny Jess, Jess who was young and bright and the best of them. They writhed and scrapped like rutting animals, plate metal rent, clothes torn, one cot broken and sod the other. They’d fuck in the dirt if they had to, they owned it, they had earned it, the world would belong to them and they belonged to each other.

She grabbed one of her tits hard enough to bruise, hard enough to break skin, but Jess just laughed all wide-eyed and savage. She spread her legs and canted her hips, and Ruby dipped down between them, mouth on cunt, tongue as deep into that furnace as she could reach. She was hot, unnaturally so, but what about them was natural any more? They were faster, stronger, more fearless than they were ever born to be. They were _better_ than they were ever born to be.

Ruby could taste it in Jess too; danger, disaster, something vital, something raw. Jess tangled her fingers in Ruby’s short hair and pulled, rocking against her mouth with a fervor that edged on desperation.

“Ruby, Ruby,” she gasped, grinning and beautiful. There was blood on her teeth, maybe her own, “Ruby red, Ruby red. You’re my girl, my Ruby Red. There’s red in you, there’s red in everything!”

The way her thighs clamped around Ruby’s head could have broken a man’s neck, but Ruby held on and let her ride out the shudders. The air between them crackled in a way that reminded her of the energy discharge from breaking a mage’s barrier. She pressed open-mouth kisses up Jess’s stomach and chest, and settled in the space by her side that was made just for her.

She smiled at Jess, and something else smiled back.

\--

Jess reached into her mouth, and pulled out a loose tooth. She held it up to examine it closely: white, healthy, whole, dabbed with blood or something like it. There was a glint of red behind her lips, shiny and new. She flicked the tooth into the fire and went back to her stew.

\--

“What are you thinking about?”

Ruby kissed a line along Jess’ shoulder before letting her head come to rest against it. The flesh was hard, like glass under leather, but no less beautiful. Jess didn’t respond: she frowned and looked about their tent as though seeing it for the first time. She tried to move away from Ruby, but she held her in place.

“Jess?” she asked, pulling her around to half-face her. The recognition was not instant; Jess blinked, swallowed. Her voice still sounded harsh like she’d been screaming.

“I’m sorry. I don’t remember.”

\--

When they fight, they fight like gods; when Jess opens her mouth, her throat is choked with red shards. They don’t talk any more. They haven’t for a while.

\--

When had they passed the point of no return? Was it on that first night? Had they sealed their fate with that first draught? A knight on the Storm Coast tells her _a taste of the limitless makes it impossible for a man to be content with the ordinary._

Her nails have flaked off. Her hands are bloody and raw. It doesn’t hurt any more, and she feels like she should be scared of it. If she could go back, would she? What came before the red? Some half-life in shades of blue.

Ruby can’t remember.

\--

She thinks there was a time when Jess held onto her in the night. She thinks there was a time when Jess slept. Now she wakes, and she waits.

\--

The lyrium broke through Jess’ skin at the shoulders, her back, her face. It punched through her armour like a hot knife through butter, twisting until the metal was trapped on her. The elfroot did nothing any more, and the sounds she made were unbearable, inhuman. She was in agony, she was scared and angry. She couldn’t seem to understand what was happening any more, or why, like an animal caught in a trap.

“You need to get that thing to the border camp, you can’t keep it here,” another Templar snarled and jabbed a finger at Jess. Like Ruby, he was red and rotten but still mostly human. The veins that showed through his translucent skin looked like worms. He was a corpse.

“She’s not a thing,” Ruby spat back, teeth bared. He knew her, and he knew Jess too. Saw what had happened to her. Saw what happened to the others. They all had to be moved on when they got too dangerous.

“If she ain’t yet, she soon will be,” he said, and there was a chitter of agreement from the rest.

“She’s not ready for that, not yet. She needs me, I’m not leaving her,” Ruby said, her anger a lodestone in her gut. Jess reached for her arm with grasping crystalline fingers. Maybe she knew. The Templar laughed.

“Go with it then. Saves them finding a handler for it,” he said. He didn’t move from his spot by the fire, and neither did the others. The point had been made: if they stayed, someone would get hurt. It wouldn’t be the first time either. There came a point for some of the changed where they would forget themselves, and get swallowed up by the lyrium entirely. They were little better than half-trained beasts then, able only to follow the most basic instructions, and prone to fits of violence.

That wasn’t Jess, that would never be Jess. No changes could ever snuff out the light in her. Ruby turned, nodded at her, took her by the arm or what was left of it.

“Come on, love. Let’s get our things. We need a bigger tent now anyway.”

\--

There were no tents in the border camp; no personal things either, aside from their swords. What use was shelter to a creature that felt no cold? What use was a cooking pot to one who felt no hunger? No clothes for the bodyless, no books for the blind, no lockets and letters for those who couldn’t remember where they came from.

Ruby pressed the soft bristles of a hairbrush to her cheek and imagined that she could still smell the rosewater on it. Was it rosewater, or lavender? Something sweet, something pretty. Something other than blood.

\--

Behemoth, they called her. Towering, terrifying. Where was Jess, under all that red? A twist of metal helm to mark where her head had been, two flat eyes that glinted in the low light. She was still there, Ruby knew it. She responded to her name, or at least to Ruby’s voice. Not any voice, just hers. Only hers.

On the march to the Emprise du Lion, Ruby hung on to the ridges on Jess’ back as they tirelessly powered through snow that would have been chest deep on a normal man. The heat from the lyrium was the closest thing to an embrace they had shared in months. She turned her face to it, cheek to crystal, and felt the corruption in her shift.

Was it possible to miss someone who hadn’t went away?

Can you miss what you can’t remember?

Are you lost if you know where you are?

She wondered if the answer would always be yes, or if the red would change that too.

\--

They sowed seeds along the way. They left behind a garden they would never get to see. Rose red. Ruby red. Was there an avenging force in nature? Its war pushed up through the earth, trying to expel itself. The soil fights with the sky and poisons all with something beautiful and rotten.

\--

_Who were you to me? Who were you, and who was I? Where did we go together, where did we come from? Are we better now than we once were?_

_Who lit this flame in us?_

\--

The skies over Sahrnia were brilliant blue, threaded with green. From their station in the woods, they couldn’t even hear the noise from the mines. The world was quiet, the sort of quiet that only came with fresh snow.

The sort of quiet where sound travelled.

A metallic glint in the trees, the crush of heavy boots on soft snow. The mountain beside her began to shift, letting out a deep growl of displeasure. Intruders. Attacks. Come to disrupt the General’s machinations. She couldn’t let that happen, the Templars couldn’t fail, they couldn’t let Samson down. They were building a future, they were building a new world. They had sacrificed so much, too much of themselves for it to end like this.

Jess was already rumbling towards them like an avalanche, unstoppable. The sharp winter sun caught in her facets, doubled and reflected to dance on the glittering snow. She was more beautiful then than perhaps she had ever been. Emboldened, Ruby embraced the scalding surge of anger that welled up from her throat.

“It’s the Inquisitor,” Ruby cried, sword thrust to the sky, “ _Kill that warrior!_ ”


End file.
